The Natural Law

by Steve Attridge

  He took a blindfold from his pocket and indicated that I was to wear it.

  “I suffer panic attacks in the dark,” I said.

  “Make it a quiet attack then,” he said, and tied it securely around my head. We drove for about twenty minutes, and then the car stopped. I was helped out, and led along a path. A door opened and I was ushered through. In the bizarre landscape I inhabit I was almost enjoying this intrigue, the helplessness of being led. Where would it lead? When you cannot see your mind ignites; I imagined a Gothic castle with torches, hunchback servants and Jacobean secrets. Will I never grow up?

  “Steps,” someone said.

  An arm guided me up and then stopped me and a door was opened. I was led through, and continued to walk. We turned left, another door opened, and I was halted. The acoustics were strange, slightly echoing.

  “You can take it off now,” someone said, with a voice like razor blades. A door closed.

  I took off the blindfold and blinked in the light. I was in a huge bathroom – mock gold gilded taps in the shapes of dolphins, a swirl bath, dozens of coloured bottles of lotions and shampoos, ornate mirrors that made the place look twice as big. At the far end in a separate little cubicle a man sat on a toilet, his trousers ballooned around his ankles and shirttails hanging over the sides of the toilet seat like modesty curtains. He’d been reading the Daily Mail but now held it, scrutinising me. He looked miserable and discombobulated. A little table was next to the toilet, home to a coffee pot and two cups.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “No thanks.”

  He poured for himself.

  “You’re wondering, so I’ll tell you. Irritable bowel syndrome. Chronic. Wouldn’t recommend it. Irregular motions. Excessive flatulence. Urgent calls of nature. Never know what’s coming next. So I take what you might call extreme precautionary measures. Most of my working day is in here, except when I’m in the field.”

  “The field?”

  “Just an expression. Life’s a battle, especially if you got bowels like mine. Where dogs have IBS, suspected causal factors are thought to be related to diet intolerances, possibly allergies, the inability of food to effectively pass through the gastrointestinal tract, and mental distress. Suspect the same may be true of humans. With ferrets, a sure sign of the disease is lethargy, and a lethargic ferret – not a pretty sight, especially if you’re a handler. Ball’s in your court, Mister Rook.”

  “I was hoping you might be able to help me. Andy King.”

  “Your message was singularly explicit. You said you had information to impart. Useful information at that. Now you’re asking for fucking help. That is a completely different barrel of eels.”

  He broke wind loudly and musically.

  “See what you’ve done now. All hell could break loose down there. And on your head be it. I can feel fructose malabsorption or even gastroesophageal reflux coming on lively, and if that is the case, the space you occupy in the world is soon to become vacant.”

  I wondered if the mention of Andy had brought on this onslaught of wind and hostility.

  “Mister Whiteley, I actually came here to warn you, to help. Trying to gain information was a secondary purpose. I’m a friend of the King family. We go way back, so when Andy was murdered I tried to help Mary and the kids. I know you had some business dealings with Andy, and I think a company called Ocean Investment might have been involved in his death. I simply came to say be careful, but I didn’t realise you were such an eminent man, with your own people. I’m sorry if I wasted your time.”

  He digested this, but not much else to judge by the growls and rumblings he was producing. It wasn’t so much a body he inhabited as a chemical factory.

  “Andy was out of his league and a liability. It was only a matter of time.”

  He hadn’t asked about Ocean Investment, which suggested he knew the company.

  “I’m worried that whatever Andy was into, it might affect Mary and the kids. Is there anything I can say to her that will help?”

  “You can tell her to marry someone with a brain next time around.”

  “What was it he was doing that was so dangerous?”

  His eyes narrowed and his bowels quietened.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “I was his friend. Since we were kids.”

  “What school did he go to?”

  “Lambeth. Lambeth High.”

  “I’m going to let you go now, Mister Rook, but only for the sake of my bowels. They’ve had enough of a stir for one day. You are dismissed. And it was fucking Broadway Road School. Lambeth my arse. Buy a lottery ticket. This is your lucky day. If I was in a better mood I’d have had you hospitalised.”

  The leather jacket man entered as if on cue, put a blindfold on me and I was led out. He drove me back in silence to the Crown and Greyhound and he took off the blindfold. I went inside and ordered a Famous Grouse. A text: Another escape. Lucky boy. Gladiator. Number unknown. I looked and saw the leather coat man still in the Audi outside. He was looking down. I stood and saw that he was holding a phone. He turned and looked straight at me. I walked outside towards the car. Was this the bastard who had killed Anna and was playing games with me? He smiled and drove away. Had I found my Nemesis? If so I needed a name.

  Chapter XII

  ‘The natural law of inertia: Matter will remain at rest or continue in uniform motion in the same straight line unless acted upon by some external force.’

  W. Clement Stone

  “It’s not a lot, but it’s something.”

  Symon spread out his notes on the coffee table. He seemed more animated than usual, obviously enjoying his soiree into the underworld. He had discovered via various business acquaintances that Ocean Investment was involved in trading currencies, but had a reputation for insider dealing and skirting the fringes of the law, but as he said, that’s what most legitimate businesses do, including banks, and they just have the law changed if they don’t like it. He said he’d carry on enquiring. He was also intrigued that I had found my stalker – a mystery man who worked for, or with, Rod Whiteley. I said I felt I had too little information on Andy King – who he was, what his role actually was. I didn’t have him clear in my mind.

  “Try being him,” said Symon. “Think John Locke. There’s a continuity of consciousness, a process of thoughts that are predictable and make up Andy King.” Clearly Symon had remembered nuggets from his philosophy degree, despite what he’d said.

  I smiled. “OK. I’m thirty eight. Beautiful wife…”

  “Stop there. How does she make you feel?”

  “Love her. She’s vulnerable, sexy, clever. More clever than me.”

  “Does that make you feel threatened?”

  “Makes me feel I have to prove myself.”

  “So when you got this offer?”

  “Dream deal. More money than I usually get. Respect.”

  “And you wanted people to know. Andy King is on his way. Big player.”

  “Yes. But that was also a mistake.”

  “Right. Make public what has to be kept secret and you’re in the mire.”

  “Exactly. I’m putting myself, and my family, in danger. Stupid.”

  “Your own worst enemy.”

  “That’s me.”

  “You had it coming.”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  “Who killed you?”

  “Bloke I knew.”

  “Someone you worked with?”

  “Yes. I think so. He considered me a risk.”

  We took this process for a longer walk until I had a stronger sense of who Andy King might have been. It was a great help and Symon was good at asking searching questions. Perhaps after a lifetime of secrecy and working in the shadows, I’d found a working partner. As students we’d been philosophy soul mates. Perhaps we could be again. Perhaps life was going to change significantly. Anna’s murder made it even more imperative that I find this k
iller.

  We now suspected that Andy had been involved in illegal currency trading, as was Rod Whiteley, and that a man I’d just met who worked for or with Rod could be the psychotic serial killer, a man of delitescent powers who was killing off people who might give me information. I needed to know exactly what Andy’s role was. Clearly he was no financial wizard, so there must have been some aspect of the trading that involved physical carriage and risk taking. I pondered all this as I drove to the university. I suspected I was going to have to visit Prague before long. I decided that I would invent a conference and invite myself as speaker so that the university would pay my expenses. It would also make Audrey Pritchard think I’m actually doing something.

  *

  Alfred had settled in well. He was much more popular than I was, which wasn’t difficult. I let him out of his cage and he flew around the room and settled on my shoulder and nibbled my ear. He was a perfect mimic and treated me to a few choice remarks. Mrs Simpson’s “Luvverly cuppa, darlin’,” the Security Guard’s “‘Ello feathers, ‘ows it ‘anging?” and my own pompous pontifications: “Hume said: ‘man is a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement’, so this complicates questions of innocence, guilt and moral culpability.” It made me realise what a prize pillock I often am.

  I had a seminar in which the students discussed their papers on Natural Law. They trooped in and took seats.

  “We need a justice system because although people may have, as a Platonic principle, an innate sense of justice, they may choose not to act on it. So free will complicates any ability people have to know right from wrong,” said the boy with the bobbing Adam’s apple.

  “But who’s to say everyone has the same innate sense of natural law? What I think is just or unjust may be different to what you think. That’s why we need certain agreed broad principles which the state can enforce,” said a girl with a barbed wire necklace tattooed around her throat.

  “But what happens if someone decides that only they are qualified to mete out justice, perhaps even execution?” asked Cass, looking at me.

  “Then they are seriously psycho,” said bobbing boy.

  If only he knew how right he was. I explained a pet theory of mine, that the ubiquitous sense of justice that children seem to have, the constant cry of “It’s not fair,” may suggest that there is somewhere in the human psyche a sense of natural justice, and that at some primal archetypal level we all have an internal judge and occasional executioner who, if life permitted, would mete out justice, retribution and punishment. I sensed that this rang true for all the students except bobble hat. Sometimes I teach well despite myself. It was also was territory coming tellingly close to the killer I was hunting.

  “Into the valley of death…” said Alfred, which seemed a suitable place to stop.

  I left Cass in my office to feed Alfred and work on her essay, which is a blessing, given what happened. Half way home I was aware I was being followed by a red Renault. I slowed down and it slowed with me. I almost decided to stop to see what it would do, but thought I would find out just how determined the driver was. I drove around aimlessly for twenty minutes, and then took a narrow country side road. I knew it led to a village, and my plan was to stop at the police station and then sit it out in a game of attrition, but on the next bend I just had time to brake before slamming into the silver Audi. The red Renault nestled behind me. What now?

  The tall man in the leather jacket got out of the Audi and approached. He opened my door.

  “Shove over,” he said.

  I moved over. He eased into the driver’s seat, moved it back an inch or so to accommodate his long legs, and tried the pedals.

  “Shit car,” he said, and followed the Audi.

  Light chat clearly wasn’t his forte. I waited a few minutes. All I could do was see what happened next. Was I really sitting next to Anna’s killer? God knows how many others he’d dispatched, as well as Jimmy and Andy King.

  “I’m not being blindfolded this time?” I asked.

  “No need,” he said. “It’s a one way trip. Give me your phone.”

  I gave him my phone. I didn’t like the sound of this.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  No response.

  “You didn’t have to kill her,” I said. “I thought you were exceptionally clever up until then. But Anna’s death was pointless. Why? Just to show you could? Because you thought she might know something about whatever it is they’re all involved in?”

  He looked ahead. I was trying to bait him to see if he was the killer. Was he this impassive when he killed Andy King, Jimmy, Anna? Maybe this is also how death comes. The drive home, an unexpected turn, a stranger with a twist of madness. I experienced a sudden rush, which I knew to be adrenalin pulsing. I smiled and savoured the feeling while it lasted and before a different kind of fear came visiting. Leather Jacket looked at me as if I needed straitjacketing. Our little wagon train drove for another half an hour, into an industrial area just outside Watford where all industry has stopped – gone bankrupt or in debt or just too tired to produce anything in an England gone to seed. It was depressing. Down a cul-de-sac and eventually we stopped at a nondescript office building with a ‘For Sale’ sign outside.

  “A dream come true. An abandoned business on the outskirts of Watford. Thank you, driver,” I said.

  He suddenly turned to me, his face full of unknown fury.

  “All my life I’ve wanted to have a clever twat like you this close to pop. And when it comes to it you will shit yourself. Like everyone else I’ve done. Including bloody Anna. She was begging for it. Couldn’t wait for her lights to be switched off. It was an act of mercy blowing her away.”

  I was ushered out, through a door and up some stairs. I recognised from the angle and the sounds, and the swish of the door that this was where I had been taken to meet Rod Whiteley. What had happened? The killer in the leather jacket switched on the light and there was Rod, seated in all his trouser-less glory on the toilet seat, but dead, his eyes popped open, his face blue-grey as drain water, his lips a pair of purple slugs. He’d wet himself and his bowels had clearly finally opened altogether to judge by the stench. The small tubby Father Christmas man looked at me.

  “OK Mister Not-long-for-this-life, talk. What were you after?”

  “The king is dead. Long live the king,” I said.

  “What?” said Father Christmas.

  “Died on the toilet, like Elvis.”

  He slapped me around the face very hard. It stung like billyo and a ring he wore carved a little blood trail. I could feel the skin split. I tried to compute what was happening. I looked at Leather Jacket.

  “You killed him. Now you’re setting me up.”

  He laughed. Father Christmas looked at Leather Jacket for a moment, but then dismissed the thought. Criminals are ever suspicious of each other, even, and sometimes especially, their best friends.

  “You came here on some pretext about Andy King, so you’d know where Rod was. It was a set up so you could come back and kill him. It has to be you. Why?” asked Father Christmas.

  “That’s ludicrous. I had a blindfold on. I didn’t know where I was. And what reason could I have for killing him?” I said.

  “That’s what we want to know. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Let me take him outside. If he’s got anything to say, believe me, he’ll say it,” said Leather Jacket.

  A minute later I was in a tiny courtyard with a few wheelie bins and Leather Jacket pointed a gun at my head. A rush of adrenalin made me feel electrically alive. I realised I’d got this horribly wrong. He said he’d blown Anna away, but she had been garrotted. Did I miss something? Had she been shot too? No, he’d been lying, just to shut me up.

  Chapter XIII

  ‘Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.’


  Ambrose Bierce

  Nothing made sense. He pushed the gun into my forehead. I could see the wheels in his head cranking infinitesimally towards the absolute and final thrill of pulling the trigger, just for the hell of doing it and hang the reason.

  “OK. Why’d you kill Rod? You’re a dead man anyway but if you talk I’ll do it quick. If not I’ll kill you in pieces and you’ll be begging me to finish it. Why’d you strangle him?”

  “I didn’t.”

  Hurdy-gurdy thoughts Catherine-wheeled around my head as I tried to work out what was happening. Nothing sensible presented itself so I opted for further confusion. Strange how being so close to death creates either trembling terror and paralysis or clarity of sorts. I had a pathetic notion I could seduce this moron with words.

  “Presumably you’re covering your own tracks by blaming me for Rod’s murder. And you still think you’re performing some sort of righteous executioner role for God knows what. A dark angel of Natural Law, but let me tell you some scholars take natural law, lex naturalis, to be synonymous with natural justice or natural right, so if you assume a symbiotic relationship between law and rights it means that I have a natural right not be treated merely as a punitive object in your singular crusade, but as a parallel agent of justice, despite the fact that you have the gun. I suggest we adjourn this meeting until you have acquainted yourself with the philosophies of Hobbes, Aquinas, Grotius, Locke, and possibly Burlamaqui and Emmerich de Vattel, then we can have an informed…”

  I would have continued but he kneed me in the groin and it took my breath away.

  “Weirdo,” he said.

  All this was wrong. This imbecile thug couldn’t have sent me the texts or covered his tracks so assiduously. I had to play for time.

  “Alright, maybe not Locke. He can be a bit dry, but you might find Samuel von Pufendorf illuminating,” I gasped, my groin throbbing horribly.

  “Fuck it, I’m just gonna pop you. Rod’s dead anyway, so…”

  A phone beeped. It was mine. Leather Jacket took my phone from his pocket and looked at it. He smirked and showed it to me. A text: A man living irrationally has no rational rights. Gladiator.